Writing

The cursive crawl, the squared-off
charactersthese by themselves delight, even withouta meaning, in a
foreign language, in Chinese, for instance, or when skaters curveall day
across the lake, scoring their whiterecords on ice. Being intelligible,

these winding ways with their audacitiesand delicate hesitations, they
becomemiraculous, so intimately, out thereat the pen’s point or brush’s
tip, do worldand spirit wed. The small bones of the wristbalance against
great skeletons of starsexactly; the blind bat surveys his wayby echo
alone. Still, the point of styleis character. The universe inducesa
different tremor in every hand, from the check-forger’s to that of the
EmperorHui Tsung, who called his own calligraphythe ‘Slender Gold.’ A
nervous manWrites nervously of a nervous world, and so
on.

Miraculous. It is as though the worldwere a great writing. Having
said so much,let us allow there is more to the worldthan writing:
continental faults are notbare convoluted fissures in the brain.Not only
must the skaters soon go home; also the hard inscription of their
skatesis scored across the open water, which longremembers nothing,
neither wind nor wake.